November 2, 2012

On the evening of Sunday 21 October we lost our colleague and friend Sarantis Theodosiou. Sarantis had been fighting for his life for 13 days at the Intensive Care Unit after a car accident, losing ultimately the battle.

We now have to cope with his absence. Even more, however, we have to come to terms with the absurdity of the arbitrary loss of a person so young.

In the face of such a difficult yet primordial and overpowering human condition, words cannot convey our feelings and thoughts. Perhaps our silent sorrow or tears are of richer content than any consoling narrative could be.

Nonetheless we do wish to speak - even briefly- about the comrade who left us. We have to talk about Sarantis, a young lawyer who was quirky enough to enjoy teaching Greek to migrants in the Sunday School of Migrants; who decided to learn Albanian, the language of yesterday's scapegoats, of the inferiors of this country, in order to better understand them or maybe to even imagine himself as this 'Other'. Sarantis also supported from the outset our venture, the Group of Lawyers for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees. He supported our collective effort to form a separate existence, different from the mainstream exemplar in our field, and to denounce the exploitation of the “weakest of the weak”, of migrants and refugees. He shared with us 6 adventurous years of collective effort, of a struggle to save our “basic principles” within an environment of multifaceted decay. His path was joined with ours, the bonds we created are and will remain strong.

His memory brings to mind words like “kindness”, “generosity” and “modesty”.

His memory compels us to keep going, in particular today.

Today, now that the cries around us about subhumans and human garbage are growing even louder, on the streets, at work and even inside Parliament, we need Sarantis to be with us more than ever.

We need Sarantis to be with us today now that the struggle against fascism and racism, sexism and other reactionary and archaic ideologies is turning into a vital need of our society.

Remembering and honouring Sarantis means fighting against fascism and racism; it means caring and standing by the side of those who are to weak to defend themselves. This would certainly have been his wish.

The level of mobilisation and the amount of people who came to give blood during the days that our friend was in hospital showed that our society has an abundance of solidarity, care and altruism.

Our Group has decided that, rather than to contribute to the wreath, we will donate to the Sunday School of Migrants, the work of which Sarantis was supporting in practice and with warmth.

We are well aware that times are hard for all of us. However, we encourage those who have the means and wish to make a contribution in memory of Sarantis to do the same.

The account number in Piraeus Bank is the following:

EUR 5018-031163-603
ΙΒΑΝ: GR25 0172 0180 0050 1803 1163 603

Contributions can also be made through Paypal via the website of the Sunday School of Migrants: www.ksm.gr